Mango Madness

While shopping at Sam's Wholesale Club I came across (what I thought) was a great deal for a pack of 12 mangos! When I got home my math wiz of a son pointed out that the mangos were actually the same price as the individual ones at our local groccery store! That's what I get for not doing the math in the store! So, I had 12 mangos, paid full price for them, and not a single mango recipe in my repertoire. Thankfully we LOVE mangos (Justin even said mangos are his favorite fruit)! So I found two new mango recipes and we had ourselves some mango madness!

Mango Lassi Some old high school friends of ours Shane and Sara posted a blog about their son's bad dream. In the dream his cup was all out of Lassi and he wanted more..... a boy that dreams about food is a kid after my own heart! I'd never heard of Lassi before but turns out it's an Indian drink, similar to a mango smoothie!

Ingredients
1 cup plain yogurt
1/2 cup milk
1 cup chopped mango (peeled and stone removed)
4 teaspoons sugar, to taste
A dash of ground cardamom (optional)

Directions
Put mango, yogurt, milk, sugar and cardamom into a blender and blend for 2 minutes, then pour into individual glasses, and serve. Can sprinkle with a little cardamom. The lassi can be kept refrigerated for up to 24 hours. Makes about 2 cups.

Mango Ice Cream I found this recipe on Gourmet Mom On-The-Go's website, she made Creamy Mango Pops, but I don't have the popsicle holders, so I followed her suggestion and froze our ice cream in a large ziploc. It worked great!

Ingredients
2 very ripe mangoes, with the skin and the pits removed
3/4 cup coconut milk (I used light coconut milk to reduce the fat content)
1/2 cup pineapple juice concentrate
1 Tablespoon sugar

Directions
Blend together until creamy and smooth. Pour into a large zip-type plastic freezer bag, seal completely, and lay flat in your freezer for at least 2 hours. When frozen, simply scoop with a metal spoon to serve!

Frozen Hot Chocolate

I've never been to New York City, but if I ever go the #1 thing on my to-do list is visit Serendipity 3 and get their famous Frrrozen Hot Chocolate! I've seen Serendipity 3's Frozen Hot Chocolate in countless movies like One Fine Day, Serendipity, Trust the Man, etc. Well, awhile back Oprah had the owner of Serendipity 3's on her show and he gave out the recipe......woohoo! I couldn't wait to make it!

Ingredients
6 pieces (1/2-ounce) chocolate , a variety of your favorites
2 teaspoons store-bought hot chocolate mix
1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 cups milk
3 cups ice
Whipped cream
Chocolate shavings

Directions
Chop the chocolate into small pieces. Place it in the top of a double boiler over simmering water. Stir occasionally until melted. Add the hot chocolate mix and sugar. Stir until completely melted. Remove from heat and slowly add 1/2 cup of milk until smooth. Cool to room temperature.

In a blender, place the remaining cup of milk, the room-temperature chocolate mixture and the ice. Blend on high speed until smooth and the consistency of a frozen daiquiri. Pour into a giant goblet and top with whipped cream and chocolate shavings.

Abbott what do you think? Andrew what do you think? Andrew... Andrew?! Come up for air son! Andrew bared down and didn't come up until he was finished, he loved it!

Piña Colada

I love Piña Coladas! This was our drink of choice for the 4th of July and I will be serving it tonight for our Big Brother kick-off party! We are obsessed with the reality TV show Big Brother on CBS! I don't know if it's really that interesting of a show or if it's because there aren't any other TV shows on during the summer but every July we get excited and tune in to watch what happens. A new season starts tonight, then new episodes will be on every Sunday (7:00 central), Tuesday (8:00 central), and Thursday (7:00 central).

Ingredients
1/8 cup silver/white rum (or 1/8 cup pineapple juice for virgin Piña Colada)
1/3 cup Coco Lopez Cream of Coconut
1/4 cup pineapple juice
1 cup ice

Directions
Put all ingredients in a blender and mix!
The Coco Lopez Cream of Coconut can be hard to find, but it's usually kept with the drink mixers. Here's what it looks like. Abby fell asleep in my shoe while we were playing cards at the kitchen table. She follows us everywhere, isn't she cute!

ButterBeer

Butterbeer is the drink of choice for young wizards in the Harry Potter books. We loved the Harry Potter series! Everytime a new book was released we would go to the midnight Harry Potter party at Borders Books, purchase the new book, and then go to Ihop for midnight pancakes. It was so much fun! The last Harry Potter book was released in 2007, here we are at Ihop eating our midnight pancakes...We would devour the Harry Potter books as soon as we got them. The boys weren't old enough to read the books by themselves so I would spend the next few days reading aloud to them. Andrew has become quite the reader though and this year he decided to read the Harry Potter books himself. He started reading the first Harry Potter book in September and finished the last book in February. That's 7 books... 2,421 pages! He enjoyed them so much and I loved watching him go through the adventure, they are so exciting! I can't remember where I heard about this recipe for ButterBeer but I thought it would be a fun drink (and it was)!

Ingredients
Cream Soda
Werther's Hard Candy (or any butterscotch candy)

Directions
Drop a Werther's candy into a cold glass of cream sodaStir the candy and soda. The boys loved watching the soda bubble around the butterscotch candy. They stirred theirs drinks for a LONG time

Bombsicle

God has blessed me with two new amazing friends, Dawn and Mary. I love them and I love going out with them! As much as I love going out with friends I can’t stand the taste of alcohol so my drink of choice is usually a Mudslide (chocolate milkshake with a little Baileys) or Malibu (coconut rum) and pineapple juice. Well Dawn got me started on a new drink called a Bombsicle and holy moly is it good! I can’t taste any alcohol it really does taste like a melted bomb popsicle! Be careful though, just because you can’t taste the alcohol doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot in there.

**Hiccup**

Ingredients (my measurements aren't exact, do what tastes good to you)
1/4 cup UV Blue Raspberry Vodka
1 cup lemonade
Ice cubes
Optional- blue sprinkles

Directions
Pour the UV Blue and lemonade into a glass with ice, stir and serve. Cover the rim with blue sprinkles for garnish.

White Hot Chocolate

We've wanted to try white hot chocolate for awhile but when I went looking for recipes they all called for half and half or heavy whipping cream (or both, yikes) and if I am going to make this irresistible drink for my family so close to bedtime I needed it to be less fattening (yes, this coming for the woman who made an entire cake for her family yesterday). I decided I was just going to wing it and try a white hot chocolate recipe using our non-fat skim milk and white chocolate chips. It actually turned out fantastic! It was absolutely delicious! Try it!











Ingredients
1 3/4 cups milk
1/2 cup white chocolate chips
whipped topping
blue sprinkles (because it makes me think of snowflakes, lol)

Directions
In a small sauce pan combine 1/4 cup milk and white chocolate chips. Heat over medium heat, whisking until chocolate melts. Stir in remaining milk and heat to warm. Pour into glasses and garnish with whipped topping and sprinkles.